Critical Text by Fernando Castro Flórez
Fernando Prats: a note about the Sismografías project.
[Sent from Chile to the 2011 Venice Biennial].

Fernando Prats is the perfect example of the contemporary creator who is able to remain open to the wonderful paths of painting without clutching to established dogmas or surrendering to an ultimately decorative hybridization. He resumed the conception of painting as an event with incredible lucidity and an atypicalpassion for dripping.

Fernando Prats works almost as an alchemist, curing with smoke the old surface of representation so that now things can be produced which are not, in any way, anecdotal.

His work is simultaneously a different manifestation of subjectivity and a rare withdrawal, which leads me to think that the hand (the appendix that has converted us in what we are today) is becoming unessential. Fernando Prats effectively stones his paintings, he lets the branches whip them or that the doves leave the marks of the flapping of their wings on them; the photographs of his work process reveal that he even licks the smoke cured surface of the paintings in order to leave enigmatic traces, or that even worms “draw” fascinating labyrinthical lines on the fertile territory of this other incarnation of painting.

Fernando Prats wants to overcome the “painting instruments” so that the work of art can be produced in the gap between the world and earth; it is, in fact, the hermeneutic space of friction between that what is at hand and that which is kept as a treasure (in a deliberate simplification of the Heideggerian considerations on the origen of the work of art) where the truth is molded with some luck and weather permitting.

When Prats transports the plastic sheets, with which he had coated and veiled Ignacio de Loyola’s mystical cave of ilumination in Manresa, to the artic glaciers , he is materializing, in an extraordinary fashion, a new aesthetic geography. His rites are primarily related with his desire to contribute to the aesthetic commotion art that, since the Aristotles era, has been typified as catharsis. When catastrophe approaches, in that moment when life (figuratively speaking) becomes unbearable a purification happens, which, undoubtedly, teaches us something. The curtain drops or the “deus ex machina” percipitates to the stage with a racket so that logical thought can assume, after the period of hoping, the conflict of what we have left. It’s precisely what is left that Fernando Prats obsesses about, that which we do not know if is too much or too litle. Fortunately, rather than reiterate an aesthetization of the scatological (something manifestly normative in contemporaneity), what this creator elevates as an obscure map are the several trails of a nomad art.

Fernando Prats travels to the unknown but also towards the beginning, in his reduction to smoke of the pictorial surface he is not contented with Malevitch’s desert nor does he have nostalgia for what lies behind (the Byzantium gold) but in what triggers fate, he acts so that the magical reveals itself.

The Sismografías project that Fernando Prats will present in the Chilean pavillion in the Venice Biennial establishes a dialogue between three pieces, which are, in themselves, processes of time condensation: an intervention centered around the volcanic eruption in Chaitén, an impressive series of pieces from after the tremendous Chilean earthquake in 2010 and a neon letters installation, which aims to revive the advertisement published by Shackleton when he recruited men capable of facing the antarctic trip.

Prats plans, in an extremely intense and committed way, a map of tremors and fractures of nature, which is more cruel than sublime, composing a sort of processual vanity. It isn’t only a “scripture of disaster”, using Blanchot’s terminology, but also a manifestation of the subject as one who, in spite of all, is capable to assume an heroic position. Even if being shipwreck is the only possible adventure from the starting to the finishing, it doesn’t mean that we have to commune with nihilism, on the contrary, the catastrophe forces us to start from the beginning, even if treading lightly.

Fernando Prats travels across his country with a map blurred by smoke, treading on a soil made into ash, inserting his papers into the cracks, gazing into a glacial horizon. His remarkable seismographic method demonstrates that the map is not only a representation of the territory but also that, following an extreme event, its testimony is inevitably sombre.

Fernando Prats is the artist selected for the Chilean Pavilion at the forthcoming 54th International Art Exhibition -la Biennale di Venezia. His project “Gran Sur” (Great South) will be installed in the Arsenals of this ancient city, the most visited spot during the event, and will be in display starting on June 4th through November 27th, 2011.

The assembly consists of three art pieces: an intervention around the impact of the volcanic eruption in Chaitén (2008); a series of works alluding to the earthquake in south-central Chile (2010); and an installation in neon lettering that reproduces the advert that the Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton may have posted circa 1911, calling for men for his expedition to Antarctica.

Prats produces images originating from smoke, through which he manages to sediment natural phenomena such as water propelled by a geyser or the surface of an immense glacier. His technique has been praised by notables such as the French theorist Paul Ardenne who recently included the work of Fernando Prats in the current exhibition at the Espace Louis Vuitton in Paris, highlighting him for initiating “a new way of painting”.

The Chilean Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia is a significant element within the policies of internationalization of the visual arts from Chile. In recent years, our presence has both increased and improved. The previous edition in 2009 became a milestone, featuring the work of artist Iván Navarro in the first Chilean Pavilion at the Arsenals.

Considering the importance of this international display, a joint effort was made between the National Council of Culture and the Arts (CNCA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its Cultural Affairs Bureau (DIRAC), the Image of Chile Foundation, ProChile, and the Chilean Navy. Also, the Joan Prats Gallery and the Publisher Polígrafa from Barcelona have joined in as well as the Embassy of Chile in Rome.

The work of Fernando Prats convinced the jury to represent Chile in this Biennial, considering both the quality and seriousness of his work and also because of his emergence into the international visual arts arena. Fernando Prats will be working with the Spanish theorist Fernando Castro Flórez as curator as well as the Chilean theorist and poet Antonio Arévalo as co-curator.

With this aesthetic proposal inspired in Chile, its geography and telluric conditions, Fernando Prats seeks to exalt the subject capable of taking a heroic stance. The “Gran Sur” project invites to reflect upon the role of geography in the identity of this country.

A central element of his exhibit in Venice will be the expedition that Prats himself carried out last March to the Antarctic territory aboard the Navy icebreaker, Almirante Viel. Commemorating the centennial of the mythical advert that the Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton would have posted in The Times, Prats installed on Elephant Island the text of said advert:

FERNANDO PRATS was born in Santiago de Chile in 1967. He lives and works in Barcelona since 1990. Graduate in painting in Escola Massana Barcelona in 1993, degree in Arts in Universidad de Chile in 1996 and post-graduate studies at Universitat de Barcelona in 2000.

He has been showing on the international art scene for the last ten years. He participated in the Second Bienal de Canarias, Pintura-Timanfaya-Los Hervideros, 2009; the Trienal de Chile, Sismografía de Chile, 2009 and in Exposición Universal del Agua, Agitación, Zaragoza 2008. He will represent Chile in the 54 Biennale di Venezia.

He has shown, among many others, at Espai Quatre, Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Galeria Joan Prats – Artgràfic, Barcelona, Spain and IVAM, Valencia, Spain. His work has been seen also at International art fairs like Art Cologne, Arco Madrid and Art Basel.

Since 1992 he has been awarded with several prizes and has received scholarships from different institutions: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Scholarship for his career, 2006-2007; artist in residence at the Kunst Station Sankt Peter Köln, 2002-2003; Presidente de la República scholarship of the Government of Chile, 1997-2000.